


Empty Nest

by Huggle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angelic Incest, Angst, Child Loss, Dark, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 14:40:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6758158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huggle/pseuds/Huggle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel's brother and sister come to him for help when their fledgling is taken.</p><p>He, in turn, goes to his family because if anyone can find the child it's Dean and Sam Winchester.</p><p>They just may already be too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Nest

**Author's Note:**

> Before anyone reads any further, this story deals with violence to a child. It does not have a happy ending, friends, in case anyone wants to turn back now if they find the subject matter triggery.

They were too tired to even speak, the third consecutive night of staking out old Ramsey’s barn turning out to be the charm as it were. Four vampires, rampant with hunger. One of them had been a nephew of the old farmer, and had played upon that to get a place for them to sleep by day and take their kills to at night for some fun before the fangs came into play.

Dean had a rough tally on how many people they’d killed there before he and Sam had picked up on the disappearances in the area, but when the police finished digging up the property the newspapers would probably have an accurate count.

That wouldn’t include any they’d turned. But that would be a problem for any hunter where those ones fetched up to deal with.

He hauled his duffle out of the boot of the car, Sam did likewise, and then unlocked the door to the motel room. Exhaustion didn’t win out over their cautious instincts – they checked the suite properly, redid the wards, and poured a salt line against every door and window.

Only then did they collapse onto their beds, bags dumped on the floor.

:: ::

“Dean. _Dean_.”

“What, Sammy, come on, not even had two fucking hours....”

Dean grabbed his pillow and lobbed it in the general direction of Sam’s voice. Tired as he was, it probably hadn’t reached Sam’s bed but it would have made his point all the same. He opened one eye, glanced over at Sam just to check, and then shot upright.

Sam had that ‘oh, shit’ look on his face. Only he wasn’t looking at Dean.

“Cas?”

Castiel was standing at the foot of Dean’s bed. There were two people standing behind him, flanking him really and Dean could feel the intensity from the angel that signified there was something serious going on.

He retrieved his gun from the floor, aiming even as he got to his feet. To his right, Sam had done the same, but Castiel was in their line of fire. Dean wanted to curse him – he was making it really hard for them to protect him if this was another ‘kidnap the Winchester’s angel’ plot.

But Castiel shot them a look of pure frustration, and their guns were suddenly tugged from their hands and tossed onto the beds. 

“They are very instinctual, aren’t they,” the woman on Castiel’s left said. “Protective.”

“If you’ve hurt him,” Dean said, “you’ll see all about protective. Cas, you want to tell us what’s going on?”

Castiel glanced apologetically at the woman. “This is my sister, Hanael, and my brother, Baraeon. Dean, we’re here because we need your help.”

Sam sat down on the bed, shoving his gun aside...but not so far that it was out of easy reach, Dean noted approvingly. Castiel, they both trusted with their lives – but other angels had so far proven to have loyalties worked out by a game of spin the bottle. 

Not that they were packing anything capable of injuring an angel – when it came to fighting his family, that was Castiel’s domain. Since his angelic upgrade, he’d had to do that more often than when he was the only angel on the Winchester side of the line. Which sucked, and just further supported Dean’s view that there was no such thing as karma.

“Ok,” he relented, and put down his own weapon. “Anybody mind if I order in pizza?”

:: ::

Hanael did most of the talking while Baraeon stood by the window of the motel, looking out on to the forecourt in sombre silence. Every now and again, Castiel would interrupt to clarify something for the brothers, or answer a question.

It was quite a story, and a lot to take in. The amount of new information on angels almost had Sam’s brain reaching geek capacity.

“You kept this kind of quiet,” Dean said, as he watched Hanael put her arms around Baraeon and whisper to him. He leaned back against her, and Dean turned away. It had to be hard enough to be so desperate without having strangers watch.

“There was never a time when it was relevant.” Castiel sounded impatient, as if he needed to be dealing with this already. Which figured, Dean supposed.

“So this would be your...niece, nephew? What?”

“If you need to put it in that context...nephew.”

Dean watched Sam get his head together. He stood next to the angels and said something to them. Dean couldn’t make out what, but the comforting tone was unmistakeable. Hanael looked at him, and smiled. A sad, hurt little smile. 

He really wanted to kill something, right that moment.

“Somebody drop the ball when they were minding the crèche?”

“Hanael and Baraeon...chose a different path, as I did. They never reconciled with Heaven, but didn’t step far enough off the path to lose their Grace. So they were vulnerable.”

Still angel enough to draw attention, but without the protection of the group. “Thought you were going to put a stop to all that shit.”

The pressure in the room become unbearable for an instant; Dean might not have been able to see Castiel’s wings, but he sure could imagine them unfurling at his back, crackling with lightning as his anger was roused. 

“There’s a lot of it to put a stop to. And only one of me.”

It was too late to take it back, and not for the first time Dean wondered just how honest Cas had been when filling them in on the situation in Heaven. He’d thought that Cas had at least some allies up there, but he was starting to doubt that. If it was just Castiel against Raphael and the rest, no wonder Cas was against the ropes. Having to make decisions that he knew he would regret not just later but as soon as they were made.

Probably like the one that had inadvertently led him to this, which Castiel would now be carrying a shed load of guilt over.

“Cas...look, just tell us what you need us to do and if we can, we’re there.”

:: ::

John’s book had long since been uploaded onto Sam’s laptop. They’d added to it in the intervening years, things they’d learned themselves, from Bobby and other hunters, from their own experiences. A lot of it had come at cost, a lot of it had come from Castiel, but there was a small section that Sam had scanned in but never really understood.

At the time, they’d known nothing about The Grand Angel/Demon Plan so Sam had mentally filed it under ‘interesting – to be reviewed at a later date’ and Dean had reminded Sam pointedly there was no such thing as angels and passed out drunk on the bed.

“That’s it,” Castiel said. His brother and sister had excused themselves, at Castiel’s prompting, and Dean was kind of glad.

Their imaginations might be going overtime about the thing that had taken their child, but the hand drawn image on the screen wouldn’t help any.

“How big is it?” Dean asked.

“They’re rare,” Castiel said. “As are encounters with them. It was thought they’d died out, for lack of prey. All the nestlings were safe in Heaven. Mostly. I’ve never...seen one myself.”

Sam tapped the screen. “No measurements, but near as I can figure...think maybe tiger?”

Well, they’d killed larger things. “Weaknesses?”

Sam’s face fell. “Ironically, bullets dipped in angel blood. Full grown, that is, not....” He trailed into awkward silence. “Guys, even when we find this thing, it’ll probably already have-”

Dean was standing behind him, and nudged him hard.

“It’s alright,” Castiel said. He put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Hanael and Baraeon understand the situation. But they want to know. If there is any chance at all, they’ll take it.”

Dean nodded. He grabbed a towel from the bathroom and laid it out on the bed. Then he broke open two fresh boxes of ammunition – one for a handgun, one for the sawn off - and sat them on top of the towel.

“Cas?”

Castiel started to take off his trench coat but paused long enough to reach into the pocket.

“Here,” he said to Sam, and pressed something into his hand. “From Baraeon. You can use it for the locating spell.”

Dean watched Sam cradle the feather as Castiel sat down on the bed.

:: ::

The name in Enochian was something Dean tried to repeat and only made it sound like he was choking on barbed wire. In English, to him anyway, it sounded like Phyglin. Sam rolled his eyes but before he could correct Dean on his no doubt awful abuse of the rules of language, Castiel strode towards the doors of the old crypt and tore them off the hinges.

He seemed to have forgotten the plan, which was that the Winchesters went in first, because Phyglin were cunning creatures. They always expected someone to come after what they’d taken and so liked to leave traps for any pursuers.

But those traps were broken and made harmless if a human walked through them first.

Dean charged after Cas, expecting a scream that would make his ears bleed, but his fears remained thankfully abstract, unformed.

Or so he thought until Castiel dropped to his hands and knees.

“Fuck,” he cried, and “Sam!”

“I know,” Sam said, and they reached Cas at the same time, grabbing hold of him while they scanned the interior of the crypt for their quarry.

Castiel shrugged them off. “It’s gone,” he said, voice low and hard. “It had no need to remain.”

Dean stared down at the broken fragments in Castiel’s hands, curved iridescent pieces that caught the moonlight filtering through the cracks in the roof. The angel slid them into the pocket of his coat. 

“Cas,” Sam said, but Dean shook his head. It was pointless – there wasn’t a damn thing they could say.

They settled for helping Cas to his feet, arms locked through his, and guiding him back to the car.

:: ::

Archangels couldn’t get drunk, but Dean was going to give it a damn good try.

They’d moved well beyond beer; now Dean topped up Castiel’s glass with Jack, and then nudged his arm to encourage him to drink it.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I hadn’t seen one before,” Castiel said, words sudden after almost an hour of saying nothing at all.

“Cas?” Dean drained his glass with a single swallow, suddenly sure he’d need it before Cas said any more.

“I suppose it was desperate, the one that breached the gates. When you have only a single source of sustenance, you would be. But they brought it down before it could flee, so I wasn’t harmed.”

Dean turned sharply and grabbed his shoulder. “You didn’t think maybe this was something to tell me before we went in there?”

“It didn’t change the situation. I’ll have to hunt it down and kill it.”

“We will,” Dean corrected him. He let Cas go, and the angel leaned back against the car. He slumped sideways a little, shoulder meeting Dean’s. “Tomorrow, let’s see if we _can_ make them extinct.”


End file.
